Note: by the time you read this, you won’t need to read this because you’ll know the world didn’t end as some people said it would on December 21, 2012. Doomsday predictions are a dime a dozen. Why anyone believes them is the real mystery.

In a nutshell: The Mayan prophecy for 2012 is something made up by people who don’t know much about the Maya. The Maya didn’t predict anything, much less the end of the world.

The idea that the Maya predicted the end of the world on 12-21-2012 is a hoax.

The Maya had several calendars and one of them starts over in 2012. Some people think this means they predicted the end of the world. Why? I don’t know. Maybe they like to scare people. The Maya didn’t predict the end of the world. But even if they did, so what? The Maya couldn’t even predict the end of their own civilization, which collapsed over one thousand years ago. Anyway, anyone can predict anything about the future. That doesn’t mean their prediction will come true.

Mayan civilization was at its peak for over 750 years in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and parts of Central America. The Maya, like all farming societies, had to study things that affect the soil and the growth of plants. They studied the pattern of the seasons and knew when to plant and when to store up food for the dry months. Their studies led them to create several calendars. We don’t really know much about these calendars. For example, we know that the Long Count Calendar—the one that ends on 12-21-2012—began about 5,000 years ago on August 11, 3114 BCE. We don’t know why the Maya started their calendar on that date and we don’t know why they ended it on 12-21-2012. We don’t even know if 12-21-2012 is the actual date the Long Count Calendar ends. All we know is that the Maya reset this calendar to day 0 every 1,872,000 days, a period known as The Great Circle. We don’t know why they thought this number was important. It’s a big number and amounts to more days than the oldest Egyptian pyramids have been around.

We know that the Maya had a large empire, but they were not able to solve some important problems. They had too many people on too little land. They destroyed their own environment by cutting down too many trees and by farming in ways that ruined their soil. Climate change brought long periods with no rain. Why should we think the Maya prophets would be any better at seeing the distant future than failed prophets of other times and other peoples?

The fact is that anybody can predict the end of the world, but nobody knows when it will happen.

End of the World 2012 Countdown Timer

December 21, 2012: Some predict the end of the world, some predict the beginning of a new era. The basis for these claims is based on the Ancient Mayan calendar. It may seem silly to base a prediction off an ancient civilization‘s calendar but the Mayans were a highly mathematically advanced civilization. Their calendar is not only mathematically complex, it is also highly accurate…

Via ScienceCasts: Why the World Didn’t End Yesterday – YouTube.NASA recently released a press release and video for December 22, explaining why the world didn’t end, since they are so confident it will not occur. This video was released several days before the supposed apocalypse that some believe will occur on December 21. This date refers to the “end” of the ancient Mayan calendar that many think signifies the end of the world due to a Mayan prophecy.

NASA already debunked every single possible doomsday and apocalypse claim in a video released earlier this year. But NASA wants to make sure that they are clear the Mayans will be wrong this time and say the entire doomsday scenario is a misconception from the very beginning.

The failed Mayan apocalypse ramblings could be a positive awakening for humanity, but it won’t be. Read on for why I’m not optimistic.

Sorry but I can’t not talk about the supposed Mayan apocalypse hubbub. I just think that we can learn some lessons from this whole thing. I mean, we laughed at Harold Camping for his absurd pronouncements about the end of the world last year (twice as the math was slightly off).

For starters, the Mayans never made such a prophecy. Even if they did — so what!? The obsession with what the Mayans may or may not have said/thought seems in part to be due to the romantic (false) notion that ancient societies were in some sort of wonderful place, in harmony with nature and the cosmos.

My basic premise

Claims such as those made about a mysterious Planet X destroying the Earth or any other…

Some say the world will end in fire; some say ice. Lately, screenwriters and apocalypse enthusiasts have preferred natural cataclysms as their world-killers. As for when the end will arrive, those folks who claim to be in the know have an affinity for stamping 2012 as the Earth’s sell-by date.

Why 2012? The answer traces back to true believers’ interpretations (and reinterpretations) of Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce and various other ambiguous and nonscientific sources. Some armchair eschatologists have narrowed the expiration date further, to Dec. 21, 2012 — when, they argue, the Mayan Long Count calendar ends its 5,125-year cycle. However, experts agree that the Mayans themselves did not believe that the world would end on this date, so feel free to buy green bananas on Dec. 19, 2012 (see: MacDonald).

The lack of scientific evidence for the coming apocalypse hasn’t deterred believers from trotting out scientific theories to serve as evidence of imminent mass destruction. One of the most remarkable ideas they’ve chosen to flog is the pole shift hypothesis, in which the Earth’s crust and mantle (or outermost layers) move as one piece. Pole shift might send the poles sliding toward the equator, swing North America poleward or produce any arrangement that might result from turning a globe in your hands.

People have been batting around some version of the pole shift hypothesis since at least the mid-19th century and, although many of the scientific questions it attempted to answer have since been addressed by plate tectonics, it’s rooted solidly in physics. Plate tectonics and pole shifts interact and are governed by the same forces, but pole shifts, in which the outer shell of the world moves as one piece, produce very different results than plate tectonics, in which pieces of the Earth’s crust bump, grind and slide — opening seas, building mountain ranges and rearranging continents.

If a large pole shift could happen suddenly, the redistribution of land and water it caused would be nothing short of cataclysmic. In the short term, it would mean earthquakes, strange weather patterns, massive tsunamis capable of drowning parts of continents, and possibly gaps in the planet’s magnetic field — our shield against harmful cosmic rays. In the long term, the redistribution of land and water in the tropics, subtropics and poles would fundamentally alter ocean currents and the heat balance of the Earth, resulting in widespread climatological shifts. Ice caps might melt and reform elsewhere, or remain melted, driving sea levels down or up.

All of which returns us to the question: Could such a catastrophic shift occur, and if so, will it happen in 2012? We’ll tell you next —

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala’s Mayan people accused the government and tour groups on Wednesday of perpetuating the myth that their calendar foresees the imminent end of the world for monetary gain.

“We are speaking out against deceit, lies and twisting of the truth, and turning us into folklore-for-profit. They are not telling the truth about time cycles,” charged Felipe Gomez, leader of the Maya alliance Oxlaljuj Ajpop.

Several films and documentaries have promoted the idea that the ancient Mayan calendar predicts that doomsday is less than two months away, on December 21, 2012.

The Culture Ministry is hosting a massive event in Guatemala City — which as many as 90,000 people are expected to attend — just in case the world actually does end, while tour groups are promoting doomsday-themed getaways.

Maya leader Gomez urged the Tourism Institute to rethink the doomsday celebration, which he criticized as a “show” that was disrespectful to Mayan culture.

Experts say that for the Maya, all that ends in 2012 is one of their calendar cycles, not the world.